Don't Call Judy Nichols Names; She Knows Where to Find the Tastiest Gluten-Free Cupcakes and Whoopie Pies in Phoenix

The gluten-free peanut-butter cupcake at Gigi's Cupcakes comes with a tiny peanut-butter cup perched on top.

What, you say? You're gluten-free? Well, come sit by Judy Nichols, author of Chow Bella's newest weekly column, "Gluten for Punishment." If you have suggestions or questions, leave them for her in our comments section. Enjoy.

Don't hate me because I'm gluten-free. It's not by choice; it's by diagnosis.

About 1 percent of Americans are diagnosed with celiac disease, an allergy to gluten, and a whole lot more say they feel better when it's reduced or eliminated from their diet.

But you don't have to look too far to find people who think that those who are gluten-free are attention-seeking, self-diagnosed, pains in the ass who totally mess up your well-designed dinner menu.

"Like a lot of chefs, I'm convinced that these diets are not always the results of the compromised immune systems of American diners, but their growing infantilism and narcissism," chef Josh Ozersky, the founder of Meatopia, told the New York Times last June in an article titled "The Picky Eater Who Came to Dinner."

Ozersky was talking about vegans, vegetarians, and people who don't want to eat sugar, soy, or lactose, among other food types. But at the top of the list was gluten-free.

The picky eater. Oh, yeah.

It's just because I want to be difficult that I will never again crunch a really crusty, flaky piece of bread. I want to give every waiter the third degree about whether the sweet-potato fries are cooked in the same oil used to cook breaded items and send him back to the kitchen to read the ingredients on the salad dressing container. Because I'm infantile. I want to drive cross-country without being able to get a hamburger or fly from Phoenix to Chicago without being able to buy anything to eat for the long hours in the airport and on the plane. Because I'm narcissistic.

When the gastroenterologist diagnosed me with celiac disease, he was practically giddy.